Shadow of a Change

by Michelle Sagara

  “I’ll—it’s not important.”

  She lied, of course. It was important; she knew it. So important, in fact, that she phoned Susan to carefully explain that she would be coming in later in the day. She dressed carelessly and grabbed a purse—not her briefcase—before she flew out of the house in search of a bus.

  The bus, hot and crowded, was oppressive. She was aware of every stranger’s gaze, and wondered if they were looking at her because she looked like a circus freak. She covered her teeth more prominently with her lips, pressing them into a tight, whitened line. She also pulled up the collar of her long jacket, and tried skulking beneath its line. It wasn’t comfortable.

  Transferring helped somewhat; the air, cool and crisp, refreshed her. For a moment she felt almost human. Then the second bus came, and once again she was crushed into a tiny, rectangular space with far too many people and far too little air. She wanted to scream, bit her lip instead, and instantly regretted it.

  But the hospital, thankfully, loomed up ahead with its twin smokestacks. She could leave this bus, and these people, and find solace in the emergency room there. They could tell her what was happening. They could help.

  Before she crossed the street, she was hit by a wave of nausea. Her knees bent; her arms stiffened and drew up. Everything twisted, converging and separating in a mindless, dizzying pattern.

  She managed to remember where she was; where she had to go. Forcing herself to her feet, she crossed the street. She couldn’t understand why the cars screeched out in wide circles around her; couldn’t understand why they were honking so loudly. Someone rolled down a window and waved a fist in the air; his words were lost to her comprehension, but his meaning was perfectly clear.

  April Stephens opened her mouth and roared.

  The roar lengthened into a terrified scream. With halting, awkward steps, she loped up the long stretch of road towards the emergency ward of the hospital.

  It shouldn’t have been crowded at this time in the morning; she was certain it shouldn’t be so crowded. But she hadn’t been to a hospital since she was eight years old and skateboards were a necessity of life, and she didn’t remember clearly.

  “Miss? May I help you?”

  It took a minute to realize that the person sitting behind the desk was talking to her, and another minute to realize that he expected her to come to him. She walked across the floor, once again too aware of the eyes of the people in the waiting room. Her hesitance grew as she awkwardly took the chair in front of the young man and his computer terminal.

  He asked her questions. Had she been here before. Did she have her Health Card with her. Did she know her family doctor. She answered them curtly, impatiently. Finally, after filling out line by line of trivial information he actually looked at her.

  “What exactly is the nature of your problem?”

  She blinked, confused.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m—I’m changing,” she replied.

  The young man raised a pale brow. “Changing, ma’am?”

  “My skin is harder and my teeth are funny and I can’t eat properly.”

  If he noticed that her voice was going up an octave, his expression didn’t give him away. He carefully and neatly input all of her information and then watched the computer screen for a minute. “That’ll be all, Ms. Stephens. If you’d care to take a seat, a doctor will be with you as soon as possible.”

  “When? When is that?”

  “Just as soon as possible,” came the firm reply. It did not allow for any other question.

  The chair that she chose was as far away from anyone else as she could possibly make it. She wanted to curl her legs up beneath her chin, but they felt awkward and heavy, and she wasn’t sure they would fit on the small edge of the chair. There were magazines, all at least a month old, in messy piles on a small table beside her. She picked one up. Politics.

  But politics was better than change. She forced herself to read article after article while she tried to remember who all the names and faces in the little pictures belonged to.

  At last, they called her name. They had to call it three times, as if her conscious mind, slumbering in an uneasy state, refused to recognize it as her own. She rose stiffly, kept her lips firmly shut, and followed the young man in the green night shirt. He pushed his way out of the waiting room, through a thick, wide door which creaked as it swung on its hinges. He was obviously used to patients who walked slowly, for his step was measured, and he glanced over his shoulder often.

  She followed him, glancing from side to side in bewilderment. Within this new set of rooms and curtained vestibules was another set of chairs, another wait. Still, the chemical, medicinal smell of the inner room reassured her; she was close to help now, she was certain of it. She sat.

  Five minutes passed, at least it felt like five minutes; she was certain that that’s what the round clock on the wall said. Big hand, little hand, hand that moved quickly. Her head hurt; her stomach rumbled and twisted painfully. She doubled over, clutching her sides. Crying, or trying not to cry. After a while, there was no difference.

  Someone was ushered into the room with great care. They put him beside her. She knew this because there was something about his smell that was familiar, almost tantalizing. Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced in his direction, hoping that he wouldn’t notice, half-embarrassed.

  She forgot it, though. His arm, bandaged somehow, was a deep, bright red. His face was white, but his forehead was cut, and a little rivulet of blood ran, like a tiny brook, between the crevices of his wrinkled forehead.

  “I’m all right, miss,” the man said, as he drew back from her probing fingers. “Just had a little disagreement, s’all.”

  April nodded, hypnotized. She looked at her fingers, at the blood on their tips, and then raised them slowly to her mouth. She didn’t notice when the patient blanched and moved four seats away.

  “Well then, what seems to be the problem, Ms. Stephens?”

  She opened her mouth suddenly, pulling her lips over her pronounced teeth.

  “Throat problem, is it?” He reached for a wooden stick. “Let me see it, then.” He reached for her chin, and then frowned as she pulled away. “Feels like you’ve got yourself a case of eczema there, ma’am.” He paused, ran his hands over his eyes, and then blinked. It had been a long shift, and he was almost, thank god, off. Interning was a rite of passage so stressful it was impossible to imagine it from the relative safety of medical school.

  She watched him with her wide, unblinking eyes. He could see the fear in them, but their intensity made him uncomfortable. “I’m changing, doctor,” she whispered, and her voice was a rasp. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  He could tell, from the thick puffiness of her lids, that she’d probably been crying. Not now, he thought, glancing furtively at his watch. Two cardiac arrests, two very serious knife wounds and a host of stitches on three hours of sleep left him very little room for sympathy, very little strength to comfort.

  “It’s nothing,” he said brusquely. “You’re probably under some sort of stress, and you’re obviously eating or wearing something you’re allergic to. Here, I’ll give you a shot of Atarax, and I’ll give you a prescription for the skin itself.” She started to speak, and he held up his hand to ward off the words. “Don’t worry about it, Ms. Stephens. Happens all the time.” Standing, and trying very hard not to yawn or show his fatigue, the young intern went in search of the section nurse.

  April Stephens sat alone in the curtained vestibule, with the little lights flashing in her eyes. All of the words she wanted to say backed up in her throat; she choked on them, shaking. She wanted to believe the doctor—doctors knew what they were doing, didn’t they?—she did her best. She took deep breaths.

  She was almost relieved to see the nurse, who proved to be a matronly woman, not a young, almost teenaged-faced girl. “You’re Ms. April Stephens?” the nurse asked, as she set aside a clipboard. “Good.
Here, then. You might want to bend over—this is a muscle shot; it’ll hurt your arm like hell.”

  April shook her head mutely, but offered her left arm instead of her right one. The nurse shrugged, took the offered arm, and readied the needle.

  Just a single shot, April thought, repeating the words like a mantra, a prayer. Just a single shot. It happens to everyone.

  She was heartbroken, but not at all surprised, when the needle snapped before it penetrated her skin. The nurse, flustered now, disappeared, but April Stephens didn’t wait for her return. There were too many odd smells in this hospital now, and chief among them was the lingering scent of blood beneath her nails.

  She didn’t go to work; she couldn’t. When she got home, the mirror showed her that her skin was indeed of the consistency to break—snap, really—the thin, hard spine of a doctor’s needle. Her head hurt, her stomach ached, and the taste of a wounded man’s blood lingered in her mouth. She stumbled to the kitchen, yanked the fridge door open, and watched it fall off its hinges with a crash.

  Her hands were clumsy as they pulled the packages out of the fridge. Molding lettuce and cucumbers that had almost liquefied she tossed to the side and forgot; she didn’t even spare them more than an instinctive shudder of disgust. She ate what she could, but it wasn’t enough; she knew it.

  She knew what she wanted. She bit her tongue, and her tongue bled; she growled and whimpered.

  This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

  But she had never been in control of her life and its changes, and although she felt despair and horror, she felt no surprise.

  That night, she woke up in the open drive of her house, the upturned throat of a limp cat between her jaws. She felt good for at least two seconds, and then her mind caught up with her body and she began to choke. She was changed, she knew it; she could see, in the soothing moonlight, the shadow of a thick tail at her back.

  She didn’t bury the cat; indeed, until she got into the house, she would have sworn that she had thrown it aside in either fear or disgust. But she hadn’t; its warm, sticky body remained with her, as if it were steel and she, a strong magnet. In the dim light of the inner house, she recognized the slack face of the cat—it was Duffy, from two houses down. A young cat.

  She had killed it. She was eating it. She couldn’t make herself stop.

  No. No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t doing this, it wasn’t real. Bones snapped against the second row of her sharp teeth.

  With a cry that was feral, worse than feral, she threw the cat away and ran down, down into the darkness. The steps were hard to take, too close together and too tiny for her feet. Gravity started what determination had finished; she felt the ground shake as she hit it with her full weight. Standing, she could just make out the large, round metal dome of her ancient furnace. Wooden jousts scraped against her head; she heard the unpleasant, hard sound of something meeting wood.

  She thought she must be crying, and opened her lips to moan; instead, she growled, a sound so low and so gravelly it reminded her of a car tearing down an unpaved drive. Silence descended as she clamped her jaw shut. Her teeth clicked sharply.

  She would stay in the darkness, in the cool damp shadows. Wait here, without light to show her the changes, without a mirror to reflect how out of control she had become. There were no living things, there were no other people; if she could be still and sleep, everything would pass into dream.

  Her lids grew heavy. Her forehead fell forward slightly, although she had no desire to do anything but stand as sleep began to wash over her.

  This was fine. This was what she wanted. Just sleep. Escape. A place where the changing didn’t matter.

  “Hello?”

  In the darkness, the word was hard and sharp and clear. It was followed by light, something that, like the word, was almost crystalline in its clarity.

  “Hello? I’m here to read the gas meter. Door was open, and I thought I’d come in. Hello?”

  Sound and light were followed by scent, the movement of shadow, the presence of warmth.

  “Hello?” The light stopped bouncing, and suddenly became a spear, a straight beam shearing into the unwary eye.

  She roared in anger, and the sound of her voice killed the little words completely. Jousts creaked as she stood; she lifted her head and felt them snap against the column of her spine. Her tail hit poured concrete, her claws left a trail in the ground. In the darkness, she could not see herself, could barely see the thing that made noise and light.

  And she knew what she wanted. Her nostrils were full of the scent of fear and life. The fear was no longer hers. She had slept, she knew, and in waking, the dream of ages was pulled from her mind, the sight of smallness lifted from her vision. This was what she was, what she had been, what she would be.

  Hungry, she took one step, and then another. The little creature turned to flee, moving quickly, breathing loudly. She liked it, this sudden spurt of movement. It felt natural to follow it; felt natural to take it out of the world with a crunch of jaws and a swing of the head.

  In the darkness, April Stephens fed, tearing flesh off bone with a tongue that would grate against metal. Then, not quite satisfied, she reared up again, pushing past think layers of plaster and old wood. She had had enough of the darkness; now it was time for the jungle, the light, and the hunt to follow.

  April Stephens had never been in control of her life or the things that changed it and shaped it. But she had never been so free as this: She neither knew that she had no control, nor cared. She strode out, primitive, great, old—a thing of memory, a dream of children, a walking death.

  Her roar filled a slumbering suburbia with its life and its breath. Soon, all of the dreamers would wake to her call, and she would hunt again.

  Short Stories by Michelle West and Michelle Sagara

  The first six stories released are connected to the Essalieyan Universe of the novels I write for DAW as Michelle West. Since those are my most asked-for short stories, those are the ones I wanted to make available first. The rest of the stories will be released in chronological order from the date of their first appearance, which are listed in brackets beside the titles, along with the anthology in which they first appeared. All of the stories have introductions (which will probably come through in the samples if you’ve already read the stories but want to read those.)

  In the Essalieyan universe:

  Echoes (2001, Assassin Fantastic)

  Huntbrother (2004, Sirius, the Dog Star)

  The Black Ospreys (2005, Women of War)

  The Weapon (2005, Shadow of Evil)

  Warlord (1998, Battle Magic)

  The Memory of Stone (2002, 30th Anniversary DAW Fantasy)

  ------

  Birthnight (1992, Christmas Bestiary)

  Gifted (1992, Aladdin, Master of the Lamp)

  Shadow of a Change (1993, Dinosaur Fantastic)

  For Love of God (1993, Alternate Warriors)

  Hunger (1993, Christmas Ghosts)

  Four Attempts at a Letter (1994, By Any Other Fame)

  Winter (1994, Deals with the Devil)

  What She Won’t Remember (1994, Alternate Outlaws)

  The Hidden Grove (1995, Witch Fantastic)

  Ghostwood (1995, Enchanted Forests)

  When a Child Cries (1996, Phantoms of the Night)

  The Sword in the Stone (1997, Alternate Tyrants)

  Choice* (1997, Sword of Ice: Friends of Valdemar)

  Turn of the Card (1997, Tarot Fantastic)

  The Law of Man (1997, Elf Fantastic)

  Flight (1997, Return of the Dinosaurs)

  The Vision of Men (1997, The Fortune Teller)

  By the Work, One Knows (1997, Zodiac Fantastic)

  Under the Skin (1997, Elf Magic)

  The Dead that Sow (1997, Wizard Fantastic)

  Kin (1998, Olympus)

  Step on the Crack (1998, Black Cats and Broken Mirrors)

  Diamonds (1998, Alien Pets)

  Sunri
se (1999, A Dangerous Magic)

  Elegy (1999, Moon Shots)

  Return of the King (1999, Merlin)

  Work in Progress (1999, Alien Abductions)

  Water Baby (1999, Earth, Air, Fire and Water)

  Faces Made of Clay (2000, Mardi Gras Madness)

  Sacrifice (2000, Spell Fantastic)

  Shelter (2000, Perchance to Dream)

  Pas de Deux (2000, Guardian Angels)

  Déjà Vu (2001, Single White Vampire Seeks Same)